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2016 Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
It goes against the intuition of some, triggers strong responses from others, and still raises the eyebrows of many: not only did Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) and German Jews withstand attempts to entice them to make aliyah from Germany post-Shoah and become âlocal Jews,â but also Russian Jews immigrated in higher numbers to Germany than to Israel for a while, and now Israeli Jews are immigrating to Germany, too. Yet do Jews in Germany see themselves in exile from Israel, or has Germany become their home of choice? This paper explores the life-worlds of a select number of individuals who fall into the age cohort of the Third Generation, and who form part of the three numerically largest groups: German Jews and Displaced Persons (DPs) and their descendants (âlocal Jewsâ); Russian Jews and their children who came to Germany in the 1990s; and Israelis who started arriving in significant numbers in the 2000s. By depicting their life-worlds, the paper sheds light onto how Jews in the country structure, live, do, experience, and contend their Jewishness collectiveness, and express <italic>Jewishnessess</italic> individually, and how, effectively, they create diasporic life-worlds, and have a special relationship to Israel but hardly feel in exile from Israel.
2016 Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
Abstract: It goes against the intuition of some, triggers strong responses from others, and still raises the eyebrows of many: not only did Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) and German Jews withstand attempts to entice them to make aliyah from Germany post-Shoah and become “local Jews,” but also Russian Jews immigrated in higher numbers to Germany than to Israel for a while, and now Israeli Jews are immigrating to Germany, too. Yet do Jews in Germany see themselves in exile from Israel, or has Germany become their home of choice? This paper explores the life-worlds of a select number of individuals who fall into the age cohort of the Third Generation, and who form part of the three numerically largest groups: German Jews and Displaced Persons (DPs) and their descendants (“local Jews”); Russian Jews and their children who came to Germany in the 1990s; and Israelis who started arriving in significant numbers in the 2000s. By depicting their life-worlds, the paper sheds light onto how Jews in the country structure, live, do, experience, and contend their Jewishness collectiveness, and express Jewishnessess individually, and how, effectively, they create diasporic life-worlds, and have a special relationship to Israel but hardly feel in exile from Israel.
2016 Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
Abstract: Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007) and Howard Jacobson's J (2014) are novels fixated on the survival of Jewish identity in hostile environments. Exploring the scholarly reception of these novels to form of a defense of their narrative complexity, this article focuses on themes relating to space and place. It does so by arguing that the depiction of home spaces in these novels allows for the concept of the eruv to become a guiding principle in the construction of both novels' narratives. A close reading of homes in these novels through the lens of eruvin exposes unexpected parallels between these vastly different writers, at the same time that it allows scholars to more easily fit these works into their authors' respective oeuvres. As such, these home spaces are argued to be "eruvic spaces" that serve a key narrative function in both texts, in turn enabling a reevaluation of the novels themselves.
2016 Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
<p>Abstract:</p><p>Michael Chabon's <i>The Yiddish Policemen's Union</i> (2007) and Howard Jacobson's <i>J</i> (2014) are novels fixated on the survival of Jewish identity in hostile environments. Exploring the scholarly reception of these novels to form of a defense of their narrative complexity, this article focuses on themes relating to space and place. It does so by arguing that the depiction of home spaces in these novels allows for the concept of the eruv to become a guiding principle in the construction of both novels' narratives. A close reading of homes in these novels through the lens of eruvin exposes unexpected parallels between these vastly different writers, at the same time that it allows scholars to more easily fit these works into their authors' respective oeuvres. As such, these home spaces are argued to be "eruvic spaces" that serve a key narrative function in both texts, in turn enabling a reevaluation of the novels themselves.</p>
2016 Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
<p>ABSTRACT:</p><p>Israeli poets are among the few to express in recent times what Aviezer Ravitzky describes as the Jewish tradition of dread of the land of Israel. While Zionism has marginalized this tradition in contemporary Jewish life and rendered it somewhat dubious, I suggest that it stimulates sage questions about the burden of modern state nationalism on Jewish life in Israel and abroad. After articulating in summary form this burden for Zionism and other strands of Judaism affected by the nationalizing effects of Zionism, I highlight its weight on Jewish diversity and Jewish ethics, pointing finally to the divisive pressure it applies through one of its key ideological features, the sublimation of the human. In light of this burden, the Jewish tradition of dread of the land of Israel might inform a more critical appropriation of modern nationalism and discern how it tears Jewish life between earth and sky.</p>
2016 Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
ABSTRACT: Israeli poets are among the few to express in recent times what Aviezer Ravitzky describes as the Jewish tradition of dread of the land of Israel. While Zionism has marginalized this tradition in contemporary Jewish life and rendered it somewhat dubious, I suggest that it stimulates sage questions about the burden of modern state nationalism on Jewish life in Israel and abroad. After articulating in summary form this burden for Zionism and other strands of Judaism affected by the nationalizing effects of Zionism, I highlight its weight on Jewish diversity and Jewish ethics, pointing finally to the divisive pressure it applies through one of its key ideological features, the sublimation of the human. In light of this burden, the Jewish tradition of dread of the land of Israel might inform a more critical appropriation of modern nationalism and discern how it tears Jewish life between earth and sky.
2016 Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
<p>Abstract:</p><p>This essay examines the concept of <i>shelilat hagalut</i> (negation of exile/Diaspora) and argues that in many ways, the political and structural changes entailed in the granting of citizenship to Jews in modern Western nation-states can be viewed as already constituting a negation of <i>galut</i> well before the emergence of Zionism. Through comparison to traditional rabbinic conceptions of Jewish communal-national status, we will see that the modern insistence upon national identification with a geographically bounded nation-state constituted a direct undermining of previous theopolitical conceptions of Israel as a geographically unbounded ânation in exile.â In light of this reframing, the usage in contemporary discourse of âcenterâ and âDiasporaâ is shown largely to constitute a false binary that generates unproductive and interminable dispute between âdiasporistsâ and classical Zionist âcentralists.â By contrast, clarifying the ways in which ideologies of European emancipation and of Zionism have both been complicit in negating <i>galut</i> can aid in producing better understandings of the relation between past and present Jewish culture and conceptuality, and in enabling more fruitful intellectual efforts to engage presently unresolved conflicts in the spheres of Jewish politics, culture, and identity.</p>
2016 Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
Abstract: This essay examines the concept of shelilat hagalut (negation of exile/Diaspora) and argues that in many ways, the political and structural changes entailed in the granting of citizenship to Jews in modern Western nation-states can be viewed as already constituting a negation of galut well before the emergence of Zionism. Through comparison to traditional rabbinic conceptions of Jewish communal-national status, we will see that the modern insistence upon national identification with a geographically bounded nation-state constituted a direct undermining of previous theopolitical conceptions of Israel as a geographically unbounded “nation in exile.” In light of this reframing, the usage in contemporary discourse of “center” and “Diaspora” is shown largely to constitute a false binary that generates unproductive and interminable dispute between “diasporists” and classical Zionist “centralists.” By contrast, clarifying the ways in which ideologies of European emancipation and of Zionism have both been complicit in negating galut can aid in producing better understandings of the relation between past and present Jewish culture and conceptuality, and in enabling more fruitful intellectual efforts to engage presently unresolved conflicts in the spheres of Jewish politics, culture, and identity.
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